: Nice post...Thank you very much. I appreciate your time in reading it.
: What is meant by "value" as it relates to art?
No, I am not speaking of 'market forces' or of 'historically determined use values.' I am speaking of the transmission of values (as in ethics, as in laws) from the culture to each individual. What I mean is that all art is what Wittgenstein called 'language games,' i.e. 'a word has no meaning if nothing corresponds to it,' (1) language as 'a convention' (2)---or better yet: '[W]hat today counts as an observed concomitant of a phenomenon will tomorrow be used to define it.'(3) Culture, in my view, is a sum of contingencies; art expresses these contingencies mnemonically, attractively...
: ...I think Wilde may have been stressing the importance of breaking free of certain
constraints imposed by a society conditioned by values that produce self-alienation. It is perhaps in this sense that art may be considered an instrument of emancipation,
emancipation from the imperatives of capitalist system maintenance. Unfortunately it is
difficult to think of an example that hasn't immediately been co-opted and exploited by the dominant culture to serve it's own ends.
What Wilde was saying was that the artist must be 'above' his and her audience---and I maintain that this was what his audience demanded of him. Had Wilde said something to the effect that the only truly great art was the art of collaboration, of cooperation, then he would have starved in a garret. Wilde, like so many others, was exemplifying the independent spirit of aristocracy, he was assisting the aristocracy in reifying itself; when Wilde 'crossed' the aristocracy, he realized (in jail) what it meant to be 'tied' to his public...
: So what are we left with?
: 1. Art (co-opted?) in the service of the dominant ideology - the 'Culture Industry', or
2. Art as a communicable experience which may result in a different (potentially
revolutionary) way of viewing the world?
In my opinion, what we are left with is what we have always had---and will always have: an attractive display of cultural values. Art will not change the way anyone views the world; the world will have to come first, like the substance produces the shadow (to paraphrase Henry James)...
Notes:
1.Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Blackwell, 1958), § 40.
2. Ibid., § 41.
3. Ibid., § 79.
